Metal furniture represents a niche within the broader furniture industry, typically crafted from materials such as iron, stainless steel, and aluminum alloys. These products are shaped through various processes including stamping, forging, casting, shearing, bending, and welding, followed by surface treatments and decorations like electroplating, spraying, phosphating, plastic coating, and wire drawing.
Wooden furniture has long been the mainstream in China, but the country's metal furniture exports also hold a significant share in the global market. Metal furniture is favored by consumers for its eco-friendliness, durability, complex design, versatile functions, space-saving, and resistance to moisture, fire, and pests. In major furniture stores, you can find a variety of stylish pure metal and steel-wood furniture, with anti-magnetic and explosion-proof cabinets priced in the tens of thousands.
The high-end metal furniture market, characterized by small batches, personalization, and artistic design, is just beginning to take off. It is integrated within traditional furniture enterprises, making it difficult to distinguish separately. Metal forming companies are well-versed in metal processing techniques, while traditional furniture companies excel in furniture design and understanding user needs. The combination of these two can maximize the unique advantages of metal furniture in terms of design and functionality, opening up new market spaces in a high-tech, high-profit niche.
The year 2017 marked the beginning of a boom in customized furniture in China. At the renowned Guangzhou Furniture Fair, about 70% of the booths featured customized furniture, with gross profits ranging from 30% to 50%, compared to only 3% to 7% for regular furniture. Leading furniture brands like Oppein, Sogal, Shangpin Home, and Good Lock, along with several design studios, are all focusing on this trend. The customization trend starts with individual furniture pieces, then moves to whole-house customization, and finally to industrialized home decoration. However, the popularity of metal furniture that incorporates various processes is just a trend. This article will focus on the distribution of metal furniture dominated by sheet metal processes, providing a reference for sheet metal equipment, molds, automation, consumables, and downstream users. The metal furniture discussed here mainly includes products like file cabinets, safes, bookshelves, explosion-proof cabinets, compact shelves, laboratory racks, and various box, cabinet bodies, tables and chairs, security doors, sofa legs, furniture leg hardware, and more, with thousands of varieties available for sale to businesses and individuals on platforms like Taobao and Alibaba.
It's important to differentiate that sheet metal enterprises generally refer to processing factories without their own brands. They provide various sheet metal and extended assembly services according to the requirements of downstream customers, mainly corporate users, with different precision and spraying quality requirements depending on the industry.
Steel furniture is a special branch within the sheet metal industry because these enterprises have their own brands and design their products, selling to both corporate and individual users. The precision of punching, bending, and linking does not need to be particularly high, and the requirements for surface rust prevention, waterproofing, fog prevention, and corrosion resistance are generally not as high as in the industry. However, there are higher requirements for design, color, touch, and aesthetics.
Technically, sheet metal processing companies can produce steel furniture, but not all can produce competitive steel furniture in terms of cost and sales channels due to economies of scale. China has formed several steel furniture clusters where industry-standard steel plates, locks, guides, screws, rivets, dampers, spraying, phosphating, electroplating, and other industrial chain supporting products and services are available, allowing for high cost-performance, small batch sizes, and short delivery times, creating a certain monopoly. Companies outside these clusters cannot compete in this niche.
Within these clusters, the entry threshold is relatively low, and it is easy for technicians and salespeople from large factories to replicate a similar enterprise with some capital and customers. This further solidifies the price advantage of the cluster. Despite complaints about competition from peers and the desire for government intervention to prevent new companies from entering the industry, competition is inevitable. Companies that can provide personalized customization, higher production efficiency, lower costs, better quality, and more perfect sales channels and have formed a certain brand can stand out in these clusters and achieve a certain degree of large-scale integration.
China's Steel Furniture Base - Pangcun Town, Luoyang, Henan
Luoyang's Yibin District is the most concentrated area for steel furniture in China, with Pangcun Town accounting for the majority of the output value. Pangcun Town is 20 kilometers away from the center of Luoyang, with 24 natural villages and more than 40,000 villagers, taking steel furniture as the pillar industry. In 2014, it was awarded the title of "China's Steel Furniture Base" by the China Furniture Association, which has provided good word-of-mouth for the local industry.
"Pangcun Iron Cabinet" has been famous in China's safe industry since the 1980s. There were two capable individuals in the area, Zhang Bingjiao and Yang Shugong, who originally worked at the commune machinery factory. Yang Shugong was technically skilled and could weld, while Zhang Bingjiao was proficient in market business. In 1982, the two returned to their hometown of Xipang Village to start a business. Yang Shugong opened "Guanghua Hardware Factory" in his own repair shop, and Zhang Bingjiao established the "First Iron Box Factory." In a simple workshop, they produced square safes through manual edge folding, spot welding, and spraying, which is the origin of today's vast steel furniture industry in Luoyang.
China's Metal Furniture Industry Base - Zhangshu City, Yichun, Jiangxi
Zhangshu City in Yichun, Jiangxi Province, is also an important production base for metal furniture in China. Located in the central part of Jiangxi Province, there are about 100 metal furniture and supporting enterprises distributed across seven townships (towns) including Guanshang, Daqiao, Lujiang, Fucheng, Yanghu, Yongtai, and Chengbei. Among them, there are about 20 large-scale furniture enterprises, and nearly 20 supporting enterprises for plastic powder, packaging, molds, and locks, with more than 16,000 employees. According to local association figures, they account for about 25% to 35% of the metal furniture market in China. The product types are similar to those in Pangcun Town and will not be repeated here. In 2012, Zhangshu City was certified as "China's Metal Furniture Industry Base" by the China Furniture Association. Zhangshu City's metal furniture industry chain is basically complete, and all raw materials and various accessories needed for producing metal furniture can be conveniently found locally.
Regarding the market share claimed by the two industrial concentrated areas, it only indicates industrial concentration and does not represent the actual share, as it cannot be accurately calculated. In addition to Pangcun Town in Henan and Zhangshu City in Jiangxi, other metal furniture production areas such as Ningbo and Yongkang in Zhejiang, Xianghe County Qikou Town and Shengfang Town in Langfang, Hebei, Foshan, Dongguan, and Zhongshan in Guangdong also have a significant metal furniture industry. For example, there are many metal furniture distributions in areas like Beilun, Yinzhou, Cixi, and Yuyao in Ningbo, with large enterprises such as Ningbo Steel Guide Office Furniture, Dekel, and Ningbo Bayi Holdings.
As mentioned earlier, the furniture industry is vast, and China has dozens of furniture industry concentration areas, each interspersed with metal products and scattered metal furniture hardware enterprises, some of which are not small in scale.
